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Arrow Season 6 Builds On Oliver & Felicity Relationship in Season 5

Fans of Olicity can apparently get their hopes up again, as Arrow's producer is confirming that the relationship between Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak will continue to be mended in the show's upcoming season 6.

Arrow's star-crossed romantic pairing finally came together at the end of the show's third season, only to be torn apart by some melodramatic trust issues involving Oliver's son in the show's fourth season. The pair maintained their crimefighting partnership in season five, but kept each other at arm's length for the majority of the run - though their romance seemed to be on the verge of restarting by the end of the season.

It seems as if that was definitely intentional, and the show will continue on that path. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Arrow producer Marc Guggenheim teased the romantic reunion of the pair in the upcoming sixth season.

“We put them on a very specific trajectory at the end of season 5. It would be very schizophrenic for us to suddenly take them off that trajectory.”

While that would seem like good news for Olicity fans, Guggenheim hedges slightly, suggesting the reconciliation could still take some time:

“There is not a single romantic kiss between any two characters in the season premiere.”

Arrow's coming off something of a creative rebound, as season five reinvigorated the show with new allies like Wild Dog (Rick Gonzalez) and Dinah Drake (Juliana Harkavy), as well as a legitimately menacing villain in Josh Segarra's Adrian Chase. Season six promises to be a year of further change for the series, as the five year flashback structure is no more, and Oliver will have to take a more active role as a father to his son, William.

Still, the relationship between Oliver and Felicity still hangs over everything. While the show's producers had originally conceived of a more comics-accurate romance between Oliver and Laurel Lance, the chemistry between Oliver and Felicity became unavoidable by the end of the show's second season. The show leaned into that chemistry heavily in its third season, teasing a "will they/won't they" romance for the majority of the year, before the pair finally got together at the end of that season. The heavy handed dissolution of their relationship midway through Arrow's fourth season pleased nobody, and it's a misstep the show has been trying to manage ever since.

It seems like the show is finally poised to overcome some of its more melodramatic impulses - and give Arrow fans not only the pairing that they want, but the one that makes the most sense.